Surprising, isn't it, where you find books popping up - and even more so when you discover them in a good library.

Years back I remember a particularly wet afternoon in Prague: I dived into a building in the Clementinum to shelter from the rain and found myself at the bottom of a long stairway. I climbed to the top to discover what was then called simply "the English library". By the time I left, the sun had come back out and I'd spent a fascinating few hours delighting in this secret find.

I am sure everyone has a favourite library (one of mine is the Kennington Library in London - to my mind a real little gem) but it is the sad truth that, in general, libraries are hard to find. In this country when you do identify one, it's more than likely to be closed as opening hours become steadily more limited. And if you do get to one that's open, it's usually difficult to get excited about - even though these days they are in theory much more focused on community needs.

I've written in a previous blog about my wish to see libraries on trains, but what a joy it would be to find books on, say, buses (I think it was Helsinki where I once saw this), tubes (any offers here?) or even the beach ...

So it was with great delight that, when I wandered down to my local seafront in Matosinhos this morning, I found that the local town council has set up a library right there on the beach in a cabin for all to enjoy. This stretch of seafront extends for 20km along the northern coast of Portugal, and there are apparently five of these little gems, allowing people to borrow books for a day (they had 100 books on their shelves and quite a number of magazines, too).

You can also drop by to read the newspapers or partake in workshops with children's writers. On Mondays, they also run classes in reading braille; and on Fridays there's tuition in building sand volcanos.

The programme runs from July to September and is free for all to use. You can even order a book from the local library and they will bring it down for you for the next day - absolutely smashing, don't you think? Isn't it time they set up something like this on Britain's beaches, too?